Rangers start with Basic skill in Dagger and the category of their starting launcher (either Bow or Crossbow).

Special Rules

Rangers have a role bonus for multishot which applies to stackable ranged weapons exceptdaggers. Skill and racial bonuses apply as normal.

Strategy

Early game

Objectives

If you're not a gnome, the Mines will be fairly dangerous. However the resident gnomes and dwarves will have plenty of ranged weapons and armor that you might want. It will be hard to attack enemies from a distance on dark levels, especially for players without infravision.

It is important to remember that enchanted arrows and arrows which have been blessed break less often than other arrows. Luck plays a factor as well so a blessed luckstone is essential for long term arrow use. (With maximum luck and blessed arrows enchanted to +2 or higher, arrows break only very rarely.) This makes Mine's End a hazardous but very important destination. This also makes obtaining holy water a high priority.

Weapons

Use your +2 arrows first; not only do they do more damage, but they are less likely to break. Note that while arrows are made of metal (which can corrode), elven arrows are made of wood, so regardless of strategy, it's a good idea to keep a few elven arrows to dispatch acidic monsters and rust monsters. Elven rangers have the advantage of having such arrows from the start of the game.

Consider poisoning your arrows by dipping them in a potion of sickness. This will cause d6 damage and will instantly kill 10% of the time if your target is not poison resistant. Some will become unpoisoned, however, giving you two stacks of arrows, some poisoned and some not. Use the unpoisoned arrows when attacking targets which are not vulnerable to poison. When you intend to enchant your arrows further (or most of your arrows have become unpoisoned), poison the unpoisoned arrows and put them back into the quiver. Note that getting potions of sickness is not difficult; 1/4 of random alchemy results become sickness, so dipping a couple of random potions together should get you a potion of sickness.

You can acquire more arrows from dead bodies or by untrapping arrow traps.

Keep in mind that Rangers can throw or fire up to 4 ranged weapons at once giving them on an average 2.5 times the damage as the same weapon in melee. Unskilled or Basic skill can randomly hurl up to 1 extra weapon, 2 extra for Skilled and 3 for Expert. See multishot for details.

Armor

Rangers are extremely unlikely to cast spells in the early game, so metallic armor is fine.

General

A good strategy is to maintain a distance from opponents: most monsters are much poorer at ranged combat than a starting Ranger. Humans, Gnomes and Orcs start with a cloak of displacement which helps with this strategy.

Elbereth can't be kept from smudging: Levitating while firing your arrows or daggers will make you fire only one missile. Also, you are paralyzed when you hurtle in the opposite direction from your shot; this lasts at least as long as you would take walking, so this is a dangerous way to run away.

Mid game

Objectives

The Quest is a bit tough, and the reward is not too great. The Longbow of Diana provides reflection, but you will want an alternate source of reflection before going on the Quest anyway, to defend against the large number of centaurs armed with wands.

Weapons

You can get several hundred arrows from the first level of the Ranger quest off of dead centaurs and untrapping the two arrow traps before the quest boss' lair. Also, the Ranger quest artifact, The Longbow of Diana, can be invoked to summon arrows of its corresponding blessed/cursed status.

Wishing for Magicbane (even if you're not neutral) is a good idea because daggers are one of the few weapons Rangers can get expert in. Uncursed athames (including Magicbane) may also be used to engrave Elbereth on the ground without dulling the blade. In addition to decent damage, it also dispenses useful magical effects on opponents (cancel, probe, stun, and scare).

Getting an artifact from your god will unrestrict the associated weapon skill. If you cannot wish or sacrifice for artifacts, spears, tridents and crysknives are all within the Rangers' skillset. You can deal significantly more damage by firing arrows in point-blank range, though.

Armor

Should you require extra AC, a small shield gives +1 AC and doesn't impede your Divination spells too much once you've trained. A shield of reflection can also be useful for its extrinsic, opening up your amulet slot for life-saving (or ESP, but ESP is granted by your quest artifact). Rangers cannot two-weapon, and probably should not be using two-handed weapons at this stage of the game.

Spellcasting

Once you have blessed your arrows and have holy water to spare, you can start blessing spellbooks and learning some of the divination spells. A good spell to practice with is light as it's easy to cast and does not take up a lot of power.

General

Because so many things need to be enchanted (e.g., melee weapon(s), arrows, silver arrows, silver dagger/spear etc), scrolls of enchant weapon are at a premium. Consider putting magic markers and wands of polymorph high on your list of priorities. (Enchanting bows is usually a waste; it only helps your to-hit calculations, not damage, and most players hit every round anyway by the time they get around to enchanting things.)

Late game

Objectives

Raising your experience level past 15 may be useful for spellcasting, but otherwise it's probably not worth the trouble. Power can be raised with scrolls of charging, and HP can be raised through alchemy and nurse-dancing.

Weapons

You will really want a good melee weapon because you will likely be levitating a lot in the endgame. That makes it dangerous to fire projectiles.

Having a silver backup weapon such as a silver dagger or silver spear is a good idea. While Rangers can't use silver sabers without penalty (unless they are gifted Werebane by their god, unrestricting it), silver daggers and spears can be thrown at incoming silver vulnerable creatures to soften them up. Silver arrows are precious and should be used only on especially nasty creatures; however, blessed silver arrows enchanted to +2 will last you a long time if you have high luck.

Armor

Spellcasting

Rangers can become powerful spellcasters at this stage, particularly with divination spells. Although other types won't be as easy to cast, divination has a lot to offer. Some of the best spells in the game are magic mapping, identify and detect unseen. Among the non-divination spells, jumping is useful on the Astral Plane as well as to keep a distance from foes. Healing may be useful if you have a pet.

Below is a table of all possible spells a Ranger can get at least Basic at.

Quest

The quest sees you fighting for The Longbow of Diana, the artifact bow that creates arrows when invoked and grants ESP when carried. It also provides reflection when wielded.
The Ranger quest is arguably one of the harder ones since centaurs are very fast and use projectiles. In addition to that, all of the quest levels are full of traps.
It is advised to have speed boots when going on the quest so that the centaurs don't hit you as much per turn. Be sure to also have reflection (centaurs are intelligent enough to use wands), having magic resistance also helps a whole lot.
The quest is full of items, however. You will probably find lots of scrolls and plenty of potions as well.

The easiest way to fight centaurs is using ranged attacks. Poisonedarrows work extremely well, even unenchanted ones. Keep your distance away from enemies, only switching to your melee weapon when fighting wimpy monsters (such as scorpions or bats).

Once in Scorpius' cavern, you might want to burn "Elbereth" on the stairs, then wake him up. Race back to the staircase as fast as you can and fight from there. He is weak enough that a good spray of arrows may finish him off after he teleports to the stairs; consider checking the maximum range you can fire before entering the cavern. Be sure to remember to cure the sickness after you kill him!

Techniques

Strategy

As in Vanilla, Rangers are weak in melee but very strong in ranged combat. In the early game it is critical to acquire new missile weapons, enchant them, and max out your luck as quickly as possible so that you don't run out of ammunition. Arrows, darts, and daggers are all good candidates for an early ranger to invest in. Elven rangers will have a distinct advantage in the early game because SLASH'EM gives additional multishot benefits for the elven bow and elven arrows. An elven ranger can have a chance of firing a volley of up to six arrows at a time from his second turn (if he wields his bow on his first turn). Additionally, SLASH'EM gives additional multishot benefits for enchanted bows.

A chaotic ranger has an advantage in sacrifice weapons, having access to powerful gifts like Bat from Hell, Doomblade, Serpent's Tongue, and Stormbringer. A neutral ranger will have a more difficult time finding a decent melee weapon, as only Magicbane, Mjollnir, and Cleaver are worth their salt as a main melee weapon of the neutral sacrifice gifts. Thus, a ranger should focus on training bow and either dagger or dart skills and building up a stack of blessed, enchanted arrows and daggers/darts, and use them as his primary weapon until he gets a better alternative such as a crysknife (much improved over Vanilla). As such, it may be worth going straight for the luckstone at Mine's End before trying sokoban, and any clear potions costing 100 zorkmids should be altar-tested at Minetown and, if blessed, used to bless your main stack of arrows.

Once the ranger has a decent weapon from the midgame on, a ranger plays much like any other role but should continue to rely on ranged attacks. It is better to enchant a stack of (preferably elven) arrows to +7 than to spend the enchantment on a melee weapon, as you will be able to fire up to 6 shots per round with a +7 bow (9 if you are an elf firing elven arrows with a +7 elven bow), with an average damage of 10.5 per hit (double if firing silver arrows at silver-haters) plus any applicable strength and skill bonuses. To put this in perspective, an elven ranger, expert in bow, firing +7 elven arrows from a +7 elven bow will fire 4.3 arrows per round, for an average of 3.5 base damage + 7 enchantment bonus + 2 skill bonus = 54 damage per turn. If firing blessed +7 silver arrows from a +7 elven bow at Demogorgon will fire an average of 3.7 arrows per turn, for an average of 3.5 base damage + 7 enchantment bonus + 2 skill bonus + 2.5 blessed bonus + 10.5 silver damage = 93.5 damage per turn. This is comparable with the damage that can be achieved with firearms.

Encyclopedia entry

"Lonely men are we, Rangers of the wild, hunters -- but hunters
ever of the servants of the Enemy; for they are found in many
places, not in Mordor only.
If Gondor, Boromir, has been a stalwart tower, we have played
another part. Many evil things there are that your strong walls
and bright swords do not stay. You know little of the lands
beyond your bounds. Peace and freedom, do you say? The North
would have known them little but for us. Fear would have
destroyed them. But when dark things come from the houseless
hills, or creep from sunless woods, they fly from us. What
roads would any dare to tread, what safety would there be in
quiet lands, or in the homes of simple men at night, if the
Dunedain were asleep, or were all gone into the grave?"